Steel buildings for Cornwall and Devon
Machinery stores, livestock buildings, workshops, industrial units. Tell us roughly what you need and you get engineered drawings and a price for the frame — and, unlike anyone else, an honest figure for the base it has to stand on.
Green is what you are quoted. Orange is what you are not.
What are you looking to put up?
What each type of building involves, how it gets sized, where you stand on planning, and what the base underneath it comes to. More going up as we write them.
Machinery store
Clear span, no posts in the way, and a floor that works harder than most. What it costs to put up and what it costs underneath.
Grain store
Walls that get pushed from the inside, a floor that takes a loader, and a roof that rains on the crop if you get it wrong.
Livestock building
Housing that has to ventilate, drain and be scraped out. Falls, channels and the slurry rules — plus the 400 metre planning trap.
Farm workshop
Room to get a machine in and work all round it, with a floor specced for the jack rather than the tractor.
Hay barn
Open sides, air through it, and the lightest slab on the farm — if it needs one at all.
General purpose building
The shed that ends up doing everything. How to spec a building for a use you have not decided yet.
Stables and arenas
Stable blocks, American barns and indoor arenas. The same steel frame as a farm building — and a completely different planning position.
Industrial unit
Workshops, warehousing, trade counters and light manufacturing. Full planning, full Building Regs, and a yard that often costs more than the shed.
Something not on the list — silage clamp, calf housing, riding arena, warehouse? Tell us what you need and it gets priced the same way.
Whichever you are after, there are two ways it can be built: cold rolled or hot rolled. What the difference is, which suits what, and what each one does to the foundations.
What a proper quote comes with
Steel buildings are not all the same thing, and quotes for them are even less alike. Four things to check on any of them — the answers are what make two prices comparable.
Where the steel is rolled
Worth asking, because it varies and nobody volunteers it. The supplier your enquiry goes to states that all of its steel is manufactured in the UK. Get it confirmed on your own quote.
Structural calculations
Engineered drawings with calculations behind them, suitable for a planning submission if you need one. A building priced without them is not the same product.
A foundation drawing
Showing the slab and the pad sizes, which come off the engineer's design. Ask whether it is included — and remember a drawing tells you what to build, not what it costs.
Supplied, or supplied and erected
Two very different prices for the same building. Make sure you know which one you are looking at before you compare it with anything else.
There are four more worth asking, and they are on the page aboutcold rolled and hot rolled frames — including the wind loading question, which matters more in Cornwall than most places.
Why we go on about the base
Because it is the part of a steel building project that surprises people, and the part most suppliers leave you to find out about on your own. Forty years of groundworks says it is worth knowing before you commit, not after.
It is not in the frame price
Steel suppliers quote steel. Site strip, cut and fill, hardcore, the slab, drainage and the access track are a separate trade and a separate bill — often a third of what you end up spending.
A drawing is not a quantity
You may well be handed a foundation drawing showing what the slab has to be. It does not tell you how much concrete you are ordering, how much stone, or how many lorry loads of topsoil are leaving the field.
The slope costs more than you think
A level field and a field with half a metre of fall across it are two different jobs. One needs a digger for a day; the other needs muck carting off and fill carting in. The calculator asks, because nobody else's does.
What the calculator gives you
Pick what the building is for — machinery store, grain store, livestock, workshop, hay barn, industrial unit — and the slab specification sets itself. Put in the span, the length and what the ground is doing, and you get an ordering list grouped by who you ring:
- Concrete in cubic metres, waste allowed, rounded to the half metre
- Type 1 in tonnes, with the loose depth to spread before compacting
- Mesh sheets or fibre dose, damp proof membrane and edge detail
- Topsoil strip, cut and fill, and muck-away loads if the spoil is going
One thing it will not do is size your pad foundations. Those come off a structural engineer's design and change with span, height, wind loading and what the ground will bear. Anyone giving you a pad size without a design has guessed it — and the real ones come with your drawings when you get a price.
Tell us what you are looking to put up
Agricultural, industrial or commercial, anywhere in Cornwall and Devon. Rough span and length is enough to start with, and every enquiry gets a reply the same day.